"Izzy?"
I blink, slowly coming back to the present. "Yes. Are you done with the bomb?"
The Doctor watches me closely, his new face looks way different than the last ones and I'm still getting used to it. He even has a different accent now. "What were you thinking?"
I shrug, sitting cross legged on one of the parts that stabilize the roof of the phone box. "Ah, you know. The good old days." I have to smile. "1963."
The moment he sees my smile, the Doctor relaxes again and bows his head over the bomb in his hands. I'm not sure that'll work with the monster we're facing today, but well...
"You mean the day you grilled my sonic memory manipulator and my sonic appearance changer?" He tries to look like he's in pain, but I know that he has the same opinion about the sonic devices now as I have.
"You criticised my landing skills!" I blink and stand right beside him. Since 1963, many things have changed, but although I'm better with changing places now, I'm still not able to be seen by other people or to step out of my blue prison. Every time the Doctor leaves, he leaves me behind. "It was my first flight, plus you manipulated my teachers with your sonic screwing devices. They came looking for me and you just made them into dolls."
He looks at me and smiles painfully. "I learned my lesson, when I had to stick with that old face and a grandchild I never really had."
I had to laugh. "Better you be nice this time."
"I'm not out to find a companion, Izzy." He turns the bomb in his hands quizzically.
I put my finger on an unconnected wire at the bottom to show him. "You always say that and still you're coming back with another human every time." He sonics the wire with his new screwdriver and I'm watching his new device closely. "Just make sure this one doesn't faint like the last two aliens you brought in here."
The Doctor grins, holding the screwdriver out of my reach. Although it is different than his manipulator, I'm still not a fan of the idea that he sonics his way through the universe just like that. "The human will not. That's one reason why it is so much fun to travel with them. Every time you think their human brains are just one step away from bursting, they just start to believe and take life out of space for granted. And they are so curious." He walks down the aisle to the blue door. "Humans have so much potential."
I zap myself onto the railing, right next to the door and look at the guard to my prison closely. We've travelled for so long now that my hate and my fury fainted like a damsel in distress. But those moments he speaks of the people I belonged to years ago, my heart pounds painfully in my holographic chest. Because it seems like he has forgotten that I was one of them once.
As long the universe is willing to keep us alive.
The Doctor watches me with a big smile. He's about to go on another adventure and he doesn't know how I feel. That I look into those changing eyes and have to admit that I'm still fighting every second of my existence. I don't want to be the blue box, travelling wherever he wants to go. I want to be human again.
"Keep it quiet", I tell him, the machine part of the time machine saving my voice from cracking with all the feelings. "And don't get killed, I'm still getting used to this face."
Still grinning, he flaps his ears. "Can't wait to see what it looks like!" And then he's out of the door, running into the very heart of London.
Although I feel alone – like every time the Doctor leaves me – I have a task now. I am the Tardis and without me, the Doctor can't go anywhere. That's one of the things I learned since I accidently became the heart of the Tardis.
Tardis. Yes. That is my name. My new name, to be precise. The Doctor used to call me Izzy, and still does, when we're alone, but since he met Susan Foreman on that fateful day in 1963 and manipulated her memory so she thought she was his granddaughter, he needed another name. Because the Doctor has one golden rule: he would never ever tell a single soul about the girl in the heart of his spaceship.
"I am not your Tardis", I growled back in 1963, trying to focus on my projection. In the beginning, I tried to practice it a lot, but since I was just able to be visible when the Doctor was around, I didn't make any visible progress in that one week. This didn't keep me from going on with it. "Tardis is a stupid name for a machine. Besides, I am not a machine, certainly not yours. I am a human." I tried to get a hold on the main console, but my projection hands just wiped through it and I started to float back to the roof. Frustrating.
The Doctor looked annoyed, but I didn't pay attention to his grumpy old face – he wasn't able to change back into his real appearance because I destroyed his sonic changer and he was really mad at me still. But I didn't want to discuss it. Not the sonic changer destruction, nor him calling me a stupid name.
With a smile, I remember my rebellious phase right at the start of our long journey. I didn't want to fly him to the planets he wanted to go to. I didn't want to talk to him. And I didn't want to like him. I just wanted to be free again.
"Tardis is a perfect name," he replied energetically. "No one will ever know that you're here, because I can tell them that - "
"How can you even say that?!", I screamed, completely furious now.
The Doctor winced and turned to the closed door, but Susan was still out there. His glimpse returned to me, even more annoyed now. "Could you please shush it?"
My anger literally took me of the ground and I felt myself zapping in and out in various places. "What? Are you afraid they could hear me?" Finally, I managed to concentrate some of my anger on the projection and appeared right beside the Doctor. He jumped again. "Don't worry about that. I can assure you: they can't hear me. Do you want to know why I am so sure about that?" I felt tears glistening in my eyes, but I wouldn't give my prisoner the satisfaction of seeing my cry. "Because I begged them to save me. I screamed it right into their ears. Over and over and over again." Suddenly, all the anger and the determination rushed out of my body, as if someone stabbed a hole into my shell. "And they didn't hear me. They don't even know I am here." Although I wasn't more than a fainting, flickering image of myself, I was still capable of feeling. And I felt desperation, so deep it was about to drown me. "I won't let you give me the name of a machine, because I have a name. A human name that'll be remembered. I will be remembered as a human and nothing else."
As I fainted back into the main console, burying my head in my hands, I heard him talking. Soft, as if he would try to convince a frightened child to come out of its hiding place, because the Doctor was here and everything would be okay.
"I won't ever forget you're a human, Izzy. Never. How could I just forget? A young girl, so full of energy and courage, so strong, so full of emotions." I could feel his hands, lying on the main console, as if he would touch me and I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to hear his words, but desperately clinging onto them. "Strong enough to survive the Time Vortex. To control it. You are human being, probably the most finest of them all. And now you are my Tardis. Off with me to discover the universe and everything beyond." I could sense the little smile in him. I could feel it and looked up, seeing him with the eyes of the Tardis. Seeing him, standing there. A lonely god, full of grief, but still with a little smile twitching his lips. His rough voice, a promise. "The agony rests, dear Izzy Saunders."
After that, he left the Tardis, his words still hanging in the air.
I didn't know what he meant back then, because I didn't feel like the agony was ever going to rest again, but throughout the years we travelled together, I realised it was not only a sentence to calm me. It was a promise. And my name.
He might have told other people that Tardis meant Time And Relative Dimension In Space but we both knew that those words were just a lie to camouflage our secret. The Agony Rests, Dear Izzy Saunders.
Now this little name I refused so long means the world to me, because the Doctor would never leave me. He would protect me with his life and as long as I was by his side, travelling the universe and everything beyond, nothing would ever harm me. Because the moment I became the Tardis, he swore an oath to himself, protecting the one thing he would never loose. Me.
I watched him losing companions, time after time. Saw them stepping out of the Tardis for the last time, leaving the Doctor behind. I was with him, every time he died and regenerated, losing himself and becoming someone new at the same time. But although everything changed, we never did. We always been the same and we probably would be forever.
As long as the universe is willing to keep us alive.
My lips curve into a smile remembering all these years we've travelled together. Me, upsetting him by taking him to the places I wanted to go, refusing to travel without a noise. Him, watching me practicing, becoming an almost independent projection, able to stay visible for him and for me, even when he was not around.
He never said it, but I saw the pride in his eyes when he first entered the Tardis and I was there, sitting on the main console, greeting him with a big smile, visible without his help.
Sometimes, just like I do now, I keep up the projection just to comfort myself with the image of my hands, working on the wires deep in the system of the Tardis, which changed it appearance last time the Doctor regenerated. Because somewhere on my journey, I lost my hate for the Doctor and I accepted my faith. Not entirely. I was still looking for a possibility to escape my blue prison, but somehow... I felt alive here, too. I felt loved and I ... I loved too.
Blushing, I brush of these thoughts, because they were not only completely new to me, but also inacceptable. The Doctor and I would never...
The door opens and I can feel him. The Doctor. He's back.
I blush even more, when he calls out "Izzy!" as if he could sense my thoughts. "Izzy, where are you?"
I give myself another few seconds to calm down, before I blink and stand right next to the Doctor. "What is it? I was just working on the dimens - "
The Doctor twirls around, facing me. His eyes are glimmering; his smile is huge and impossible to hide. He wants to grab my shoulders, but his fingers brush through my holographic arms and I shiver. Somehow, it is intimate, but weird at the same time. "Doctor, what - "
"Can't you hear her?," he asks whispering. Throughout all these years, not a single companion was able to hear me, but he is still afraid that someone might be able to one day. "She's just about to - "
Interrupting him now, instead of me, the door of the Tardis flies open a second time.
We both turn around to look at the blonde girl, standing in the doorway. Her clothes tell me that we're at the very beginning of the 21st century and her frozen muscles tell me that she didn't expect this at all. Well, nobody does until they see it with their own eyes.
Her expression reflects fear and then...
The girl spins around and runs out the door, before I can even blink.
"What... what was that?," I ask the Doctor, startled and irritated. I'm used to new companions, always babbling about how the Tardis is bigger on the inside. But I never saw a maybe-soon-to-be-companion react like this.
The Doctor grins down at me; his momentary appearance is much higher than mine. "Her name is Rose Tyler."
I look back up at him. "And...?"
He just grins without answering my question and just goes back to the main console, a weird looking ... head in his hands.
Still confused I zap myself right beside the door. "Is she going to ret - "
The door opens a third time, almost slapping into my flickering face.
"He's gonna follow us!"
She stops, right at the end of the aisle, her muscles freezing again, like she's not able to enter the console room. As if that would mean that this is real.
I stare at her, mesmerized by something I can't name yet, while the Doctor assures her that not even Genghis Khan managed to get past that door. I remember the occasion, but I can't focus on that now. All I see is this girl.
Rose Tyler.
We stare at each other, although she's not aware that I am staring at her, as well as she's not aware that she's staring at me. The Tardis.
Time seems to stand still and when I am finally able to look away from her, the Doctor catches my gaze. He can see my questions, my irritation. I am confused, but years and years of travelling taught me to trust my feelings, my instinct.
The Doctor nods at me, before he's talking to the shocked girl again. She's still staring, her tiny, ordinary human mind trying to understand what seems to be impossible.
No, not an ordinary human mind.
I can feel my heart, beating against my holographic rib cage.
Not an ordinary, tiny human mind, but something so much more powerful. Something so strong, it could swallow the whole of the Vortex at once, becoming the new...
... the new heart of the Tardis.
"Rose Tyler." My voice trembles with hope. Hope I almost gave up keeping. "Rose Tyler."
And after almost 900 years in space and time, I am about to break free.
